State of play

I’m not one of those who gets too paranoid about state interference in my life. My experience is that no matter how sophisticated the control system, the more incompetently it is run. But every now an then, you spot something that makes you wonder if the crackpots might have a point, like today’s headline that the government wants to introduce a law to make the questions on phone-in competitions harder.

Why? Because, say the critics, if the questions are so easy then it becomes a lottery, not a test of skill. But how do you police it? Who decides whether a question is hard or not? As Chris Tarrant says on Millionaire, they’re only easy if you know the answer. So, for example, a question on gardening that would be easy for a gardener would be a complete stumper to me.

No, I think there are more important things for our legislators to worry about how easy or otherwise it is to get a shot at the dream. There’ll be a Pub Quiz Minister next.

Nobody’s prefect. If you find any spelling mistakes or other errors in this post, please let me know by highlighting the text and pressing Ctrl+Enter.